'33Z. 


SHAKESPEARE 


SHAKESPEARE 

AN  ADDRESS 

BY 
GEORGE  EDWARD  WOODBERRY 

A 


PRINTED  FOR  THE 

WOODBERRY  SOCIETY 

1916 


COPYRIGHT,  1916,  BY  GEORGE  E.  WOODBERRY 


THE  MERRYMOUNT  PRESS  •  BOSTON 


THIS  ADDRESS  WAS  DELIVERED  AT  THE  CEL- 
EBRATION OF  THE  TERCENTENARY  OF  THE 
DEATH  OF  SHAKESPEARE,  UNDER  THE  AUSPICES 
OF  THE  DEPARTMENT  OF  ENGLISH  OF  BROWN 
UNIVERSITY,  IN  SAYLES  HALL,  APRIL  26,  1916 


SHAKESPEARE 

IT  is  not  for  any  single  voice  to  bear  to 
Shakespeare  the  plaudits  of  the  thea- 
tre. The  mere  multiplicity  of  the  events 
of  this  wide  commemoration,  the  volume 
of  universal  applause  of  the  generations, 
force  us  to  realize  the  insignificance  of 
any  particular  expression  of  the  general 
praise.  As  in  a  popular  festival,  each  parti- 
cipant, as  he  passes,  follows  his  own  whim 
in  the  common  carnival.  The  scholar  will 
turn  the  leaves  of  his  book  and  linger 
caressingly  over  recondite  difficulties  of 
the  text  or  the  meaning;  the  player  will 
fit  the  costume  to  the  mind,  and  play  the 
part  from  his  bosom.  Everything  will  go 
on  as  in  a  play.  To-day  all  the  world  's  a 
stage.  For  the  most  part,  it  is  by  the  eye 
that  Shakespeare's  world  will  be  seen, 
embodied  in  a  fantastic  round  of  revels, 
a  general  masquerade,  a  pageant,  how 
varied,  how  familiar,  how  interminable! 


2  SHAKESPEARE 

Shakespeare's  world! 

"  Create  he  can 
Forms  more  real  than  living  man!" 

Falstaff,  Ariel,Titania's  Indian  Boy!  How 
they  throng  the  memory  as  if  coming 
through  a  hundred-gated  Thebes!  If  it  is 
by  its  transitoriness  that  we  know  life,  it 
is  by  its  permanence  that  we  know  the 
ideal.  There  is  an  eternal  quality,  an  ever- 
lasting freshness,  on  the  intellectual  cre- 
ations of  man,  analogous  to  the  morning 
lustre  that  still  lingers  on  the  Eros,  the 
Apollo,  the  Hermes, of  ancient  days.  Who 
of  English  speech,  bred  to  the  traditions 
of  his  race,  does  not  recognize  Hamlet 
in  his  "inky  cloak"  at  a  glance?  Not  to 
know  him  would  argue  one's  self  un- 
taught in  the  chief  glories  of  his  language. 
With  what  a  welcome  eye  we  greet  the 
Henrys,  old  John  of  Gaunt,  old  York, 
and  how  many  a  young  prince  of  brief 
or  long  renown!  We  are  able  to  look 
in  Prosperous  Magic  Book,  though  bur- 


SHAKESPEARE  3 

led  deeper  than  ever  plummet  sounded. 
What  a  story  is  recorded  there,  familiar 
to  our  sight  since  our  childish  eyes  first 
fell  on  some  glorious  pifture  of  the  lumi- 
nous leaf!  What  is  most  impressive  to  me, 
in  a  world  whose  characteristic  it  is  to  pass 
away,  is  the  permanence  of  these  ideal  in- 
carnations of  human  life  in  its  vital  flow 
and  infinite  variety.  It  is  three  hundred 
years  since  the  Maker  of  Magic  passed ; 
yet  his  figures  seem  to  have  left  us  but  an 
hour  ago.  They  combine,  as  they  recede, 
into  a  Renaissance  procession,  wreathing 
along  in  another  age  than  ours;  they  com- 
pose, in  the  distance,  into  a  true  triumph 
of  time,  with  many  a  mediaeval  and  classi- 
cal element  of  look  and  gesture ;  and  yet, 
ere  the  scene  fades,  it  has  opened  to  our 
eyes,  we  know,  the  timeless  vision  of  life. 
Two  things  in  this  great  vision  fasci- 
nate me:  the  charm  of  the  youths,  the 
wisdom  of  mature  age.  It  is  in  the  earlier 
plays  that  I  find  the  spirit  of  April,  mount- 


4  SHAKESPEARE 

ing  with  each  year  into  a  richer  and  more 
delicate  bloom.  In  Richard  II,  the  tender- 
est  of  ill-starred  princes  unfitted  for  a 
crown  in  this  tough  world,  how  piercing 
is  the  poetic  appeal !  There  is  weakness  in 
his  lyrical  eloquence,  but  how  it  climbs 
the  heavens  of  youth!  Biron,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  too  clever  by  half  for  a  true  court, 
and  needs  the  protection  of  a  love's  nun- 
nery to  give  his  wits  room  and  air.  In  this 
morning  mood  Shakespeare  seems  like 
his  own  Mercury, 

u  New-lighted  on  a  heaven-kissing  hill,"- 

so  irresponsibly  vital  is  his  gayety,  the 
mere  play  of  his  mind  in  all  the  ways  of 
beauty  and  sentiment,  of  wit  and  laugh- 
ter, of  courage  as  quick  as  it  is  perfect, 
of  grace  in  the  aftion,  and  of  courtesy, 
which  is  the  grace  of  the  mind.  No  less 
appealing  is  the  maturer  atmosphere  of 
his  manlier  day :  the  grave  demeanor  of 
Theseus,  the  inviolable  peace  of  Pros- 


SHAKESPEARE  5 

pero.  In  these  two  I  find  touches  of  an 
almost  Lucretian  calm, — that  quiet, 

u  Yearned  after  by  the  wisest  of  the  wise, 
Passionless  bride,  divine  tranquillity," 

but  never  so  brought  down  to  earth  as  in 
Shakespeare's  dream.  For  to  my  eyes  the 
great  vision,  at  either  limit  of  its  range, 
in  its  charm  of  youth,  in  its  wisdom  of 
age,  wears  the  aspe6t  of  a  dream.  There 
Shakespeare's  poetry,  as  apart  from  its 
dramatic  grasp  of  the  passions,  was  at  its 
ripest.  The  fabric  is  compact  of  illusion ; 
yet  this  charm,  this  wisdom,  are  compel- 
ling in  all  lands.  You  may  sketch  the 
frontiers  of  civilization  by  the  echo  of 
Shakespeare's  name.  Truth  sometimes 
uses  a  dream  as  its  best  medium :  such 
is  poetic  truth.  There  is  an  abstract  ele- 
ment in  poetic  truth;  it  is  not  for  an  age, 
but  for  all  time.  Truth  in  Shakespeare — 
that  which  greatly  distinguishes  him  — 
is  poetic  truth.  It  is  capacity  to  express 
poetic  truth  that  measures  a  civilization. 


6  SHAKESPEARE 

To  realize  life  in  the  abstract  as  noble 
or  beautiful  or  humane,  to  set  it  forth  so 
with  radiance  upon  it, — that  is  civiliza- 
tion in  the  arts.  Shakespeare  is  the  chief 
modern  example  of  this  supreme  faculty 
of  mankind. 

Prospero,  you  remember,  is  sometimes 
taken  as  a  symbol  of  creative  genius.  He 
declares  his  might: 

"graves  at  my  command 

Have  waked  their  sleepers,  op'd,  and  let  'em  forth 
By  my  so  potent  art." 

The  characters,  it  is  true,  bear  the  old 
names  that  they  once  bore  in  history  or 
romance  before  their  waking ;  but  when 
they  walk  a  second  time,  they  are  made 
of  a  finer  than  earthly  substance,  they 
have  more  than  mortal  speech ;  they  have 
suffered  an  ideal  change.  They  are  crea- 
tures seen  by  the  mind's  eye.  They  are 
no  longer  individuals;  a  universal  ele- 
ment has  entered  into  them,  wherein 
if  any  man  look  he  sees  his  own  face. 


'SHAKESPEARE  7 

These  are  not  men,  but  man ;  it  is  thence 
that  they  are  immortal  in  literature.  The 
power  of  evocation,  such  as  Prospero  de- 
scribes it,  is  the  most  convincing  proof  of 
genius.  Evocation  is  its  royal  stamp.  So 
the  statue  slept  in  marble  until  Michael 
Angelo  evoked  it  from  the  block;  so 
music  sleeps  until  it  is  evoked  from  the 
chords;  so  the  Virgin's  face  is  evoked 
from  the  canvas.  The  vision  seems  magi- 
cal at  its  first  creation,  whatever  be  the 
art  through  whose  medium  it  comes. 

Art,  thus,  from  the  beginning  of  civili- 
zation has  brought  new  worlds  into  being. 
They  blaze  out  like  intermittent  stars  and 
fade  away:  the  divine  sphere  of  Plato's 
youths,  the  world  of  Plutarch's  men,  the 
thronged  region  of  the  Renaissance  ro- 
mances whence  came  Shakespeare's  ideal 
women.  How  many  worlds  of  art  there 
have  been !  how  strange  it  is  to  fall  in  with 
one  of  them  unexpectedly,  like  some  lost 
province  of  the  mind  or  some  far  country 


8  SHAKESPEARE  ' 

that  we  know  not  of!  I  remember  years 
ago  at  Naples  coming  upon  the  Pompeian 
painting  of  the  ancient  time.  It  was  then 
that  the  figures  of  the  mythological  world 
and  the  legendary  age  of  Greece  first  be- 
came visible  images  to  me, — a  Theseus, 
a  Jason,  a  Medea;  and  the  Greek  past, 
which  had  lain  in  my  mind  in  a  sculptural 
form  rather  than  pidtorially,  took  on  the 
romance  of  color  with  a  certain  strange- 
ness in  the  look  of  the  men, — a  racial 
strangeness.  It  was  as  if  I  had  wandered 
into  a  forgotten  chamber  of  the  world. 
Art,  in  all  the  fields  of  the  imagination, 
has  many  of  these  lost  provinces  in  its 
domain,  stretching  over  the  centuries  of 
man's  various  fortunes  with  the  soul. 

There  is  something  foreign  to  us  in  any 
past ;  but  the  past  is  known  to  us,  in  its 
spiritual  part,  only  by  these  evocations 
embodying  the  passions  of  life.  They  are 
not  historic;  they  are  ideal.  They  are  not 
individual;  they  are  abstract.  They  are 


SHAKESPEARE  9 

more  or  less  intelligible  according  to  our 
own  understanding  powers;  but  taken 
together,  they  constitute  the  true  story 
of  man's  life.  As  we  review  the  record, 
even  to  the  "dark  backward  and  abysm 
of  time/ 'notwithstanding  all  strangeness 
in  the  aspeft  of  the  vision  under  the  vary- 
ing light  of  time's  changes,  these  evoca- 
tions of  art  in  all  its  forms  are  the  clearest 
memorial  of  the  soul's  life,  age  after  age. 
It  is  the  least  encumbered  with  uncon- 
cerning  things.  It  writes  one  truth  large 
on  the  ruins  of  time  in  each  great  age, 
whatever  be  the  city  or  the  people:  this 
truth, — that  it  is  the  victory  in  the  field 
of  the  spirit  that  decides  a  nation's  glory. 
Shakespeare  is  the  chief  glory  of  Eng- 
land. What  Homer  was  to  the  ancient 
world,  Virgil  to  imperial  Rome,  Dante  to 
mediaeval  Italy,  that  Shakespeare  was  to 
the  English.  His  name,  as  we  envisage  it, 
breaks ,  like  a  constellation ,  into  stars ,  som e 
major  some  minor,  a  cluster  of  world- 


10  SHAKESPEARE 

names  now, — Hamlet,  Lear,  Othello, 
Macbeth,  a  progeny  endless  as  Banquo's 
line.  Each  character  clothes  himself  with 
a  new  world, — as  it  were,  new  heavens 
and  a  new  earth.  What  noble  landscapes ! 
the  forest  of  Arden,  the  Midsummer 
Wood,  the  enchanted  isle,  Venice,  Ve- 
rona,Rome  !  In  theart  of  evocation  Shake- 
speare held  a  master's  wand.  Scarce  any 
other  poet  seems  so  facile  and  so  various 
in  creation.  It  is,  perhaps,  an  error  of  per- 
spective that  gives  so  strong  a  character 
of  multiplicity  to  his  imaginative  world. 
The  drama  has  crowded  its  own  stage  in 
every  poetic  land.  There  was  much  detail 
and  variety  in  Virgil,  if  one  attends  to 
them,  in  the  changeful  flow  of  the  verse. 
Shakespeare  seems  to  us  more  abundant, 
too,  in  part  because  we  are  native  to  his 
world.  It  was  our  childhood  region.  I 
began  to  know  his  work,  where  I  like 
to  think  he  first  made  acquaintance  with 
himself,  in  the  Histories.  I  first  saw  him, 


SHAKESPEARE  11 

I  remember,  in  that  company  of  English 
Kings,  which  is  one  of  the  bravest  pano- 
ramas of  history.  Every  verse  in  those 
great  chronicles  vibrates  with  English 
blood.  It  was  thus  as  a  national  poet  that 
he  first  trod  the  stage.  To  this  day  there 
is  no  such  vital  history  as  he  wrote,  be 
the  scene  where  it  may.  In  him  Holinshed 
and  even  Plutarch,  noble  as  they  are  in 
their  own  speech,  leapt  to  a  life  above 
life.  But  it  is  the  Rose  of  England  that  he 
most  summons  from  the  dust.  It  is  a  bap- 
tism of  patriotism  for  a  boy  to  be  nursed 
on  the  English  plays.  Shakespeare  was  so 
great  an  Englishman  from  the  first. 

"This  royal  throne  of  kings,  this  sceptr'd  isle, 
This  earth  of  majesty,  this  seat  of  Mars, 
This  other  Eden,  demi-paradise ; 
This  fortress  built  by  Nature  for  herself  .  .  . 
This  precious  stone  set  in  the  silver  sea,  .  .  . 
This  blessed  plot,  this  earth,  this  realm,  this  England ! " 

With  what  a  flow,  with  what  a  strength, 
with  what  a  radiance  the  verse  mounts! 


12  SHAKESPEARE 

And  in  many  another  passage  of  martial 
ardor  or  the  victorious  cry  of  arms,  one 
hears  the  living  echo  of  Agincourt  still 
pulsing  along  that  far  horizon-air.  Yet 
this  was  but  the  golden  portal  of  Shake- 
speare's verse. 

The  first  incarnation  of  his  genius  was 
in  history;  the  last  incarnation,  more 
powerfully  spiritual,  was  in  fate.  There 
was  an  interval  when  his  spirit  walked  in 
an  enchanted  pastoral  land,  sown  with 
wild  forest  and  vistas  of  Italy;  and  there 
was  an  afterworld  of  poetic  romance,  from 
which  everything  except  pure  reality  has 
been  eliminated,  which  was  his  farewell 
to  life.  In  these  comedies  of  either  group 
there  was  the  glamour  of  another  age  than 
ours.  In  the  Histories  and  Tragedies  we 
encounter  a  reality  more  distinctly  of  our 
world, — a  reality  seen  with  the  serious- 
ness of  youth  in  the  one,  with  the  serious- 
ness of  age  in  the  other.  What  gives  to  the 
Comedies  their  tranquil  atmosphere,  their 


SHAKESPEARE  13 

touch  of  fantasy,  their  other- worldliness, 
is  the  Renaissance,  the  preceding  age  out 
of  which  their  characters  trooped,  bring- 
ing their  landscape  with  them,  together 
with  their  costume,  revels,  and  speech. 
The  substance  of  the  Comedies  is  the  very 
stuff  of  the  Renaissance  in  its  earthly  look 
and  mortal  feeling.  It  is  a  world  of  acci- 
dents garbed  in  romance, — the  world  of 
the  Renaissance  imagination.  In  the  Tra- 
gedies, on  the  other  hand,  the  garment  of 
Time  is  stripped  off.  The  world  may  be 
Denmark  or  Scotland;  it  is  indifferent. 
Cyprus  and  Britain  are  but  names.  It  is  a 
world  of  realities,  the  world  of  the  stark 
soul.  It  is  true  that  whatever  be  the  sensi- 
ble garniture  of  the  play,  its  times,  occa- 
sions and  mental  modes,  the  ideas  are  still 
the  ideas  of  the  Renaissance.  Shakespeare 
is,  essentially,  the  emanation  of  the  Re- 
naissance. The  overflow  of  his  fame  on  the 
Continent  in  later  years  was  but  the  sequel 
of  the  flood  of  the  Renaissance  in  West- 


14  SHAKESPEARE 

ern  Europe.  He  was  the  child  of  that  great 
movement, and  marks  its  height  as  it  pen- 
etrated the  North  with  civilization.  That 
was  his  world-position.  It  made  him  even 
a  greater  European  than  he  was  a  great 
Englishman,  and  gave  him  a  vaster  coun- 
try than  his  nativity  conferred.  His  genius 
exceeds  his  age,  and  is  a  universal  posses- 
sion; and  this  is  because  he  transcended 
the  accidents  of  the  Renaissance,  fair  and 
far-spread  as  they  were  and  much  as  he 
employed  them ;  and  in  the  great  trage- 
dies which  seem  at  times  supra-mortal, 
while  still  using  the  spell  of  the  ideas  that 
the  Renaissance  gave  him,  read  the  fates 
of  men,  in  a  universal  tongue. 

Every  great  movement,  nevertheless, 
such  as  we  name  universal,  has  the  limi- 
tations of  its  arc.  Our  understanding  of 
Shakespeare  already  depends  largely  on 
the  vitality  of  Renaissance  elements  in  our 
education.  Each  man  must  live  in  his  own 
generation,  as  the  saying  is ;  but  the  gen- 


SHAKESPEARE  15 

erations  are  bound  together  by  thegolden 
links  of  the  great  tradition  of  civilization. 
A  writer  is  justly  called  universal  when 
he  is  understood  within  the  limits  of  his 
civilization,  though  that  be  bounded  by 
a  country  or  an  age.  Seasonal  changes,  as 
it  were,  take  place  in  history,  when  there 
is  practically  an  almost  universal  death, 
a  falling  of  the  foliage  of  the  tree  of  life. 
Such  were  the  intervals  between  the  an- 
cient and  mediaeval  time,  the  mediaeval 
and  the  modern.  The  immense  amount  of 
commentary  on  Shakespeare  proves  the 
decay  of  his  material,  and  of  his  modes 
of  thought  and  expression,  quite  as  much 
as  it  illustrates  his  profundity.  The  Re- 
naissance has  long  been  a  past  age,  and 
now  rapidly  recedes.  Shakespeare's  scenic 
world,  at  least,  begins  to  have  the  strange- 
ness of  aspect  which  I  said  I  first  recog- 
nized in  Pompeian  painting.  Much  in  the 
present  festivals  in  his  memory — recon- 
stru6tions  of  his  epoch — is  antiquarian. 


16  SHAKESPEARE 

He  has  still  his  lightning-stroke  at  the 
moment  of  fate,  his  musical  eloquence  in 
speech,  his  lovely  settings  of  emotion; 
but  the  eye  is  blind  that  does  not  see 
that  Shakespeare's  imaged  world  is  as 
remote  as 

"all  that  insolent  Greece  or  haughty  Rome 
Sent  forth,  or  since  did  from  their  ashes  come." 

Art,  I  know,  by  the  apparent  con- 
temporaneity of  its  masterpieces  denies 
time.  Genius  has  an  eternal  quality  in  its 
substance.  Beauty  has  everlastingness. 
I  walk  through  the  museum  of  Athens, 
by  the  calm  bas-reliefs  of  the  farewells  of 
death,  with  no  thought  of  antiquity.  I  read 
a  knightly  romance  as  if  the  morning 
sunlight  still  bathed  its  green  forest  and 
shining  armor.  The  violets  I  find  in  my 
books  are  the  same  that  grow  in  my  gar- 
den. Life  is  always  a  present  moment. 
But  when  art,  like  Prospero  plucking  off' 
his  magic  garment,  lays  aside  its  apparent 
contemporaneity, — that  illusion  of  eter- 


SHAKESPEARE  17 

nity  which  is  implicit  in  our  consciousness 
of  the  present  moment, — it  resumes  mor- 
tality ;  it  contracts  decay ;  it  disintegrates 
into  history.  Shakespeare's  art  suffers  the 
common  fate, — yet  with  a  difference,  with 
an  immortal  greatness.  It  grows  remote. 
Strangeness  creeps  into  its  aspect.  But  it 
is  equal  to  its  peers,  and  still  looks  at  us 
with  the  unfathomed  eyes  of  Apollo  or  of 
Oedipus 

The  changelessness  of  art  depends 
upon  the  slowness  of  change  in  man's 
appreciation  of  it.  That  change  may  be  as 
gradual  as  a  summer's  day ;  it  may  be  as 
abrupt  as  an  earthquake  rift ;  but  finally  it 
transforms  a  civilization.  Through  what- 
ever secular  changes,  the  expression  in 
the  eyes  of  life  is  mystery.  Such,  too, 
is  the  final  expression  in  the  eyes  of 
art.  To  me  the  expression  seems  more 
and  more  enigmatic  as  art  recedes.  The 
mystery  of  the  fates  of  men  is,  I  think, 
best  expressed  in  English  with  poetic 


18  SHAKESPEARE 

truth  in  the  tragedies  of  Shakespeare, 
as  the  beauty  of  life  is  best  displayed  in 
his  pastoral  comedies  and  kindred  plays. 
However  time  may  pluck  at  them,  they 
still  speak  a  universal  language.  It  is  true 
that  Shakespeare  concentrated  the  Re- 
naissance age,  and  that  was  another  world 
than  ours ;  we  see  it  in  an  evening  light ; 
but  we  are  its  lineal  children  and  its  lan- 
guage is  native  to  our  minds.  No  greater 
age  ever  robed  humanity  in  a  shining 
garment.  The  garment  may  fade,  but  the 
soul  remembers  long  its  great  epochs  and 
makes  of  their  master-spirits  its  sacred 
guardians ;  for  the  unseen  commonwealth , 
the  true  State,  is  spiritual,  and  has  spirit- 
ual guardians. 

Art — and  I  always  mean  to  include  in 
the  general  term  the  fine  art  of  literature 
—  art,  so  understood,  is  the  solvent  of  the 
nations.  That  is  how  Shakespeare  came 
to  be  a  great  European.  The  Renaissance 
liberated  him  from  nationality  in  a  pro- 


SHAKESPEARE  19 

vincial  sense.  He  was  one  of  the  fathers, 
and  is  now  a  chief  pillar,  of  the  invisible 
republic  of  letters,  or  intellectual  State, 
which  is  the  core  of  modern  civilization. 
Impalpable  as  any  ideal  commonwealth 
of  old  thinkers,  this  State  is  a  spiritual 
reality.  Shakespeare  helped  materially 
to  shape  its  present  form.  The  commu- 
nity of  scholars  in  mediaeval  days  rested 
on  a  universal  language,  Latin.  The  Re- 
naissance broke  the  bonds  of  that  great 
tongue,  rich  with  the  accumulations  of 
thought  and  knowledge  through  the  cen- 
turies of  its  millennial  career;  but  not 
before  a  common  mould  of  thought  had 
been  established  in  the  diverse  nations, 
and  mental  intercommunication  between 
them  assured.  Latinity  receded  from  the 
world  in  all  forms,  especially  in  language; 
but  art  still  made  a  universal  appeal  in  so 
far  as  it  spoke  dire6lly  to  the  senses  in 
painting  and  sculpture,  architecture  and 
music;  and  though  poetic  art  uses  a  screen 


20  SHAKESPEARE 

of  language  and  approaches  the  senses 
through  the  mind, its  creations,  when  they 
become  visible  through  the  screen  of  lan- 
guage, are  found  to  be  woven  of  the  same 
original  stuff  that  the  sister  arts  employ. 
There  is  this  kinship  and  essential  iden- 
tity in  all  the  arts.  Shakespeare,  indeed, 
employed  his  special  tongue,  the  Eng- 
lish, with  a  superb  touch  on  its  forms 
of  expression ;  but  far  greater  than  any 
linguistic  skill  was  that  creative  might 
with  which,  time  and  again,  he  modelled 
a  world  of  the  universal  mind,  so  compact 
of  loveliness,  sweetness,  or  grandeur  that 
the  words  are  but  its  initial  harmonies.  It 
is  in  this  world  of  the  mind  that  he  is  so 
great  a  master.  Therefore  other  realms 
than  England  quickly  stripped  the  screen 
of  language  from  his  work  and  made  him 
European  by  their  diverse  tongues  as  he 
already  embodied  the  intellectual  fires 
and  romantic  horizons  of  the  general  age. 
He  contributed  powerfully ,  by  his  sheer 


SHAKESPEARE  21 

inner  worth  and  charm  as  a  poet,  to  the 
transfusion  of  national  cultures  which  has 
long  characterized  western  civilization, 
has  made  its  nations  intellectually  hospi- 
table, and  has  most  continued  the  inher- 
itance of  that  great  tradition  which  poured 
originally  from  antiquity,  and  through  the 
Renaissance  overspread  Europe.  It  is  thus, 
however  slowly,  that  the  world  is  unified. 
The  republic  of  letters  has  no  frontiers. 

u  Greece  and  her  foundations  are 
Built  below  the  tides  of  war." 

It  is  a  spiritual  State, and  bears  in  its  hands 
"olives  of  endless  peace." 

Shakespeare,  through  embodying  the 
Renaissance,  was  thus  a  main  force  in 
"  humanizing,"  in  the  scholarly  sense,  the 
modern  age.  By  the  brilliancy  of  his  genius 
he  conciliated  nations.  This  was  to  serve 
humanity  greatly.  It  should  not  be  for- 
gotten on  his  anniversary.  But  the  effect 
of  Shakespeare  historically  on  world-cur- 
rents is  less  to  us  to-day  than  his  elemen- 


22  SHAKESPEARE 

tal  magic  in  the  ways  of  genius.  Genius  is 
known  by  its  works.  There  it  is  obvious 
to  all ;  but  who  would  dare  analyze  its  cre- 
ative light?  I  only  venture  the  sugges- 
tion that  one  characteristic  of  genius  in 
its  works  is  immediate  vision, — what  is 
sometimes  called  intuitive  vision,  —  and 
that  one  measure  of  its  force  is  the  in- 
tensity of  the  vision.  Genius  in  its  creative 
works  does  not  proceed  by  calculation, 
by  any  adaptation  of  means  to  ends,  or 
by  any  mode  of  mechanical  processes.  It 
uses  neither  foresight  nor  afterthought; 
its  works  are  made  at  a  single  cast.  That 
is  why  I  have  spoken  of  its  works  in  the 
arts  as  "  evocations/'  The  summons  is  in- 
stantaneous, and  instantly  obeyed.  Genius 
does  not  proceed  as  if  by  mental  logic 
from  step  to  step ;  it  does  not  reason  things 
out;  it  makes  no  use  of  analysis.  It  sees 
its  object  as  if  by  revelation,  as  an  image 
disclosed.  It  resembles  rather,  in  its  oper- 
ation,the  processes  of  vital  growth.  How- 


SHAKESPEARE  23 

ever  long  may  be  the  unconscious  prepa- 
ration of  nature,  the  plant  blossoms  in  a 
night, — a  single  unguessed  and  exquisite 
bloom.  The  vision  of  genius  comes  as  a 
whole  and  instantaneous,  as  a  face  floats 
into  the  air  of  memory. 

There  is  this  immediacy  in  the  creations 
of  art  as  they  arise  in  the  mind.  So  little 
are  they  foreseen  that  they  are  always 
a  surprise.  So  little  are  they  planned  that 
they  often  puzzle  their  own  creator  to  in- 
terpret them.  So  little  are  they  indebted  to 
ordinary  reason  that  poets  have  always 
called  them  "inspirations."  They  do  not 
spring  from  observation,  however  long 
or  profound.  Never  do  they  repeat  any 
experience  of  the  aftual.  They  are  free 
from  the  world  of  nature.  These  creations 
have  a  world  of  their  own, — a  mental 
world.  Shakespeare's  visible  world  is  in 
"the  mind's  eye. "The  mental  world  is 
a  true  world,  like  nature;  but  it  contains 
greater  reality.  Balzac  used  to  say,  turn- 


24  SHAKESPEARE 

ing  from  his  callers  to  his  books, — "  Now 
for  real  people/'  A  universal  element  en- 
ters into  the  mental  world.  It  is  the  sphere 
of  poetic  truth,  Shakespeare's  world.  It 
was  the  place  of  his  vision  of  life.  Nothing 
of  Hamlet,  Lear,  Othello,  Macbeth,  was 
ever  a6lual  in  experience ;  nothing  such 
as  their  fatal  histories  was  ever  observed. 
The  truth  their  souls  contain  is  purely 
mental;  it  is  poetic  truth.  Shakespeare 
presents  truth  in  a  vision  of  that  world 
which  exists  only  in  "the  mind's  eye." 
Yet  who  does  not  perceive  that  his  world 
is  more  "real  than  living  man," and  un- 
veils the  fates  of  men  with  a  revealing 
range  and  search  beyond  nature?  It  is 
here  that  genius  inhabits  and  creates. 

In  this  poetic  world  Shakespeare,  as  he 
matured,  developed  in  his  genius  a  pene- 
tration and  intensity  that  seem  not  only 
beyond  nature,  but  at  times  beyond  mor- 
tal power.  It  is  in  the  four  great  trage- 
dies that  he  most  impresses  us  so.  Tra- 


SHAKESPEARE  25 

gedy  is  for  youth.  Nature  draws  a  film 
over  the  eyes  of  youth  which  tempers  the 
sight  to  that  fierce  light;  but  for  older 
eyes, 

"  Grown  dim  with  gazing  on  the  pilot-stars," 

it  is  too  strong  a  ray.  Even  in  youth  one 
sometimes  lays  down  the  book.  The  mind 
turns  from  the  four  tragedies  to  the  ear- 
lier "moonlight  and  music  and  feeling" 
of  the  charmed  meadows  and  woods  and 
cities  of  the  pastoral  plays  and  their  kin, 
much  as  Tennyson  turned  from  Milton's 
angel  hosts  to  delights  of  Paradise: 

"Me  rather  all  that  bowery  loneliness, 
And  brooks  of  Eden  mazily  murmuring, 
And  bloom  profuse  and  cedar  arches 
Charm." 

So,  too,  one  turns  from  the  Inferno  of 
Dante  to  the  sweetness  and  glory  of  the 
Paradiso.  The  genius  of  the  tragedies  is, 
indeed,  more  transcendent;  but  there  is 
greater  fascination  in  beauty  than  in  ter- 
ror. It  may  be  noticed  that  the  tragedies 


26  SHAKESPEARE 

are  full  of  vision,  not  doftrine.  No  judg- 
ment is  passed  on  what  is  revealed.  It  is  as 
if  the  poet  said,"  Look,  and  pass/'  This  is 
what  I  have  called  the  world  of  the  stark 
soul.  At  times  it  scarcely  suffers  words. 
The  pastoral  comedies, on  the  other  hand, 
are  garmented  with  lovely  phrase.  They 
are  not  free  from  melancholy  shades,  as 
at  the  close  of  "Love's  Labor's  Lost." 
"The  scene  begins  to  cloud,"  says  Biron, 
but  it  is  only  with  natural  grief.  For  the 
most  part  the  tragic  lot  of  man  is  in  the 
background,  if  it  intrude  at  all.  We  know 
the  sadness  of  Antonio,  in  the  "  Merchant 
of  Venice,"  but  not  what  secrets  of  mor- 
tality it  concealed. 

In  the  pastoral  comedies,  as  I  some- 
what inaptly  term  them  from  their  senti- 
ment rather  than  from  their  landscape, 
we  are  in  the  old,  almost  antique  world 
of  romance.  Romanticism  had  its  nest  in 
Greece.  We  feel  its  nativity  in  such  a  play 
as  "Pericles."  The  chance  adventures  of 


SHAKESPEARE  27 

travel,  the  outlandish  regions,  the  sur- 
prising incidents,  the  ship  wrecks,  the  gen- 
eral sense  of  a  roving  world, — in  brief,  a 
thousand  details  of  composition, —  remind 
us  how  recently  the  drama  had  emerged 
from  a  chaos  of  romantic  fiction.  The 
world  of  Shakespeare  is  full  of  this  vari- 
ety in  detail,  like  a  book  of  the  Italian 
Renaissance,  and  with  the  variety  there 
blended  an  omnipresent  strangeness 
equally  characterizing  that  age  of  which 
the  very  breath  was  mental  discovery. 
The  human  spirit  was  like  an  immigrant 
in  a  new  country :  anything  might  happen 
there.  The  tradition  of  the  past  is  felt  in 
Shakespeare's  story,  both  in  its  materials 
and  its  methods  of  narration;  but  it  is  a 
past  whose  breath  of  life  was  romance, 
and  awoke  in  Shakespeare's  mind  as  in  a 
world  about  to  be  born.  Shakespeare  was 
great  as  an  Englishman;  he  was  greater 
as  an  emanation  of  the  Renaissance  which 
he  drew  into  himself;  but,  greatest  of  all, 


28  SHAKESPEARE 

he  was  the  blazing  star  of  romanticism, 
when  its  unearthly  beauty  took  posses- 
sion of  the  European  world. 

It  is  characteristic  of  genius  when  it  is 
greatest,  to  include  a  broad  arc  of  man's 
progress  in  its  own  career.  Thus  pra6li- 
cally  an  entire  cycle  of  romantic  art  may 
be  observed  in  Shakespeare's  drama.  It 
began  in  archaism ;  it  ended  in  a  climax 
of  perfeftion.  It  is  multiple  and  compos- 
ite, characterized  by  an  incessant  change 
of  theme  and  heterogeneity  of  material.  It 
has  the  miscellaneousness  as  well  as  the 
large  horizons  of  the  Elizabethan  mind. 
It  is  a  drama  as  romantic  in  method  as  in 
subjeCt.  Exuberance  is  the  quality  of  the 
creative  genius  that  produced  it,  and  infi- 
nite variety  marks  its  works.  His  genius  is 
ever  companioned  by  a  wandering  spirit. 
Consider  the  many  disguises  in  which 
he  uses  the  device  of  the  episode,  as,  for 
instance,  the  play  within  the  play,  the  in- 
troduced dance  or  masque,  the  tale,  the 


SHAKESPEARE  29 

soliloquy,  or  more  subtly  in  the  brief 
idyllic  passages  that  are  for  poetry  what 
"purple  patches"  are  for  rhetoric.  Yet, 
however  far  or  often  genius  may  accom- 
pany this  wandering  elf,  it  keeps  within 
the  magic  limit  which  holds  all  in  true 
unity.  This  romantic  surface,  like  phos- 
phorescence playing  over  the  dramas,  is 
an  incessant  and  growing  phenomenon 
of  Shakespeare's  art.  Not  less  obvious  is 
the  unity  of  feeling  in  them  —  what  is 
sometimes  called  "keeping" — which  is 
an  essential  part  of  romantic  unity,  and 
which  operates  with  such  force  in  Shake- 
speare as  to  place  each  of  his  plays  in  a 
world  of  its  own. 

The  singularity  of  his  genius  is  that 
while  expressing  itself  so  admirably  that 
at  each  new  disclosure  it  seems  to  have 
arrived  at  perfection  in  its  kind,  it  grows 
nobler,  grander,  or  sweeter  at  each  new 
creation.  It  belongs  to  most  of  us  to  seize 
on  some  single  aspeft  of  art,  and  to  cleave 


SO  SHAKESPEARE 

to  it.  Taste,  by  a  reversion  of  type,  may 
recur  to  the  archaic  and  primitive,  espe- 
cially under  the  impulse  of  a  preference 
for  simplicity.  It  may,  at  least,  without 
going  to  such  lengths,  require  that  there 
be  only  few  elements  in  high  beauty, — 
a  single  bloom  in  an  isolated  vase,  or,  as 
the  custom  now  often  is  in  museums,  one 
supreme  statue  in  a  room  dedicated  to  it. 
Taste,  such  as  this,  finds  romantic  art  too 
distracting  in  theme,  too  overwhelming 
in  feeling.  The  tragedies  and  later  ro- 
mances have  too  much  depth  of  thought, 
too  much  richness  of  decoration,  too  much 
mystery  (whether  of  terror  or  beauty), 
for  minds  of  such  a  calibre.  At  most  they 
find  pleasure  in  the  golden  comedies  that 
sprang  to  light  before  Shakespeare's  gen- 
ius reached  its  climax  of  power. 

These  comedies,  which  for  many  are 
the  centre  of  delight,  if  not  of  worship, 
in  Shakespeare's  work,  have  a  smooth- 
ness and  softness  of  execution  and  effect, 


SHAKESPEARE  31 

somewhat  Victorian  in  the  quality  of  their 
art,  if  I  may  venture  to  say  so,  somewhat 
Tennysonian  in  exquisiteness  of  impres- 
sion: not  that  Shakespeare  resembles 
Tennyson  in  style,  but  there  is  a  kinship 
of  genius  between  them  at  that  stage  of 
Shakespeare.  This  period  of  smoothness 
and  softness  in  art  marks  a  point  of  per- 
feftion  \vhich  lasts  but  a  moment.  Art 
roughens  again,  in  mood  and  a6l,  as  it 
bends  to  the  new  age.  There  is  a  Michael 
Angelo  for  a  Rafael  then ;  or  the  Perga- 
mon  marbles  replace  the  Parthenon.  It 
may  be  for  better  or  for  worse,  but  the 
new  age  will  have  its  way.  The  peculiar- 
ity in  Shakespeare's  case  is  that  he  him- 
self brought  in  the  new  age,  with  the  tra- 
gedies and  the  last  romances.  Though 
Webster  and  Ford  followed  him,  he  had 
already  struck  the  hour.  The  cycle  of  ro- 
mantic art  in  the  drama  was  complete, 
though  there  might  be  a  long  after-play 
of  its  fires. 


32  SHAKESPEARE 

Shakespeare  not  only  embodied  the 
spirit  of  romantic  art  in  his  own  age;  he 
heralded  a  greater  movement  in  time.  Art 
has  a  double  visage:  it  looks  before  and 
after.  Romance  is  its  forward-looking 
face.  The  germ  of  growth  is  in  romanti- 
cism. Formalism,  on  the  other  hand,  con- 
solidates tradition;  gleans  what  has  been 
gained  and  makes  it  facile  to  the  hand  or 
the  mind;  economizes  the  energy  of  gen- 
ius. Formalism  supports  feebler  spirits, 
directs,  and  restrains.  Formalism  is  a 
backward  looking  mode,  and  archaic  with 
respect  to  its  own  time.  Romance  ploughs 
in  the  field  of  the  future  as  in  an  eternal 
spring.  It  is  true  that  the  reaction  from 
Shakespeare's  art  was  extreme  in  Eng- 
land. An  intellectual,  rather  than  a  poetic, 
age  succeeded.  But  when  the  earth  began 
to  expand  again  with  an  April  season  of 
the  world,  how  the  seed  of  romanticism 
sprang  everywhere,  like  grass,  as  if  it 
were  life's  natural  verdure!  Romantic 


SHAKESPEARE  33 

art  did  not  then,  indeed,  put  forth  one 
all-embracing  genius,  like  Shakespeare; 
it  required  a  Byron,  a  Tennyson,  and  a 
Browning  to  complete  the  cycle  in  our 
age  just  past;  but  the  voice  of  the  modern 
triad  is  that  of  romance  once  more  a- wing 
for  a  supreme  flight.  The  Renaissance 
found  a  new  birth  in  Keats  and  Shelley 
and  many  another;  and  though  romanti- 
cism, spreading  through  a  wide  circle  of 
art  and  thought,  seems  less  exclusively, 
less  predominantly  literary,  in  that  age  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  it  gave  breath  to 
a  whole  spiritual  movement.  Its  leaders 
were  not  more  indebted  to  Shakespeare 
than  to  the  other  great  spiritual  guardians, 
as  I  have  called  them,  of  the  international 
State  that  exists  invisibly  at  the  core  of 
modern  civilization;  but  they  are  indebted 
to  him,  as  one  of  those  guardians,  there 
sitting  with  his  peers. 

Shakespeare  has  been  praised  in  Eng- 
lish more  than  anything  mortal  except 


34  SHAKESPEARE 

poetry  itself.  Fame  exhausts  thought  in 
his  eulogy.  "The  myriad-minded  one" 
is  his  best  designation.  Wholly  apart, 
however,  from  his  extraordinary  mental 
inclusiveness,  the  comprehensive  grasp 
and  intuitive  penetration  of  his  visionary 
genius,  such  that  he  seemed  to  create 
worlds  of  being  like  separate  stars, — and 
apart  also  from  the  substance  of  wisdom 
which  the  dramas  contained,  he  was  espe- 
cially wonderful,  let  me  add,  as  a  man 
of  letters  merely, — that  is,  as  a  man 
accustomed  to  express  ideas  in  written 
words.  An  excess  of  linguistic  power  over 
language,  equally  with  an  excess  of  met- 
rical power  over  verse,  characterized  the 
latest  plays.  A  marvellous  power  of  ex- 
pression over  language  often  distinguishes 
genius;  but  Shakespeare  in  his  phrases 
seems  independent  of  the  bonds  of  lan- 
guage as  of  the  bonds  of  metre.  But  he 
was  something  more  and  other  than  liter- 
ary. He  was  a  wonderful  example  of  the 


SHAKESPEARE  35 

human  spirit,  and  in  his  creative  power 
affefts  one  with  a  sense  of  the  inexplica- 
ble, like  a  natural  force.  Above  all,  he  was 
intensely  human  in  his  spirituality;  that 
is  why  he  is  so  often  thought  unspiritual. 
Hence  he  gathers  the  world  under  the 
spell  of  his  genius.  It  is  thus  that  he  is 
beheld  at  last  as  an  arch-leader  in  the 
world  of  the  spirit  of  man, — one  of  those 
few  who,  however  distant  in  country  or 
epoch,  are,  after  centuries,  the  true  "  sons 
of  memory." 

1  have  set  forth  Shakespeare,  you  per- 
ceive, immortal  as  he  is,  in  the  light  of 
an  historic  world  lapsing  now  into  the 
shadows  of  time.  I  remember  once,  when 
I  was  sailing  over  the  Aegean  Sea  north- 
ward from  Athens,  I  saw  what  was  after- 
ward for  me  a  Iong-recolle6led  scene. 
Naturally  my  eyes  were  fastened  on  the 
Parthenon,  visible  from  afar.  Shores  and 
promontories  slowly  became  obscure  in 
the  growing  distance.  At  last  nothing  re- 


36  SHAKESPEARE 

mained  except  the  temple  seen  against 
the  setting  sun.  Every  touch  of  earth  had 
departed  from  it,  —  a  vision  as  it  were  in 
the  golden  west.  I  thought  how  some 
young  Ionian,  approaching,  thus  saw  it 
under  the  dawn,  ages  since,  with  the  glint 
on  Athene's  lifted  spear, — first  a  gleam, 
then  the  temple,  then  the  "  darling  city." 
I  saw  it  in  my  departure,  garmented  with 
light,  a  ruin  alone  in  the  sun.  It  was  to 
me  then  the  symbol  of  antique  beauty.  It 
is  so  that  I  see  Shakespeare's  world  in  the 
light  of  a  receding  age. 


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